The Truth Is, Republicans Are Slowly Killing Their Own Party

As liberals or progressives, we have always dreamed of a day when the Republican Party would dismantle, leading the way for our collective voices to be heard. A day when we would have a chance to implement the policies that we know will grow the middle class, and help everyone achieve success. That day has come, but it is quite different than we had imagined.

The Republican Party that we have always known is on life support, and the future does not look good.

Gone are the days of country club Republicans, the Republicans that could debate policy with a liberal for hours. While little was agreed upon, there were still some absolute truths that made a real debate possible. Increasingly, those Republicans are becoming harder and harder to find.

The proof of the slow and painful death of the GOP lies in the fact that Donald Trump is leading in the polls. Anyone with an ounce of respect for the office of the presidency knows that Donald Trump cannot be seriously considered as a presidential candidate. While having zero actual policy proposals, Trump is very good at firing up the backwards, uninformed base of the conservative movement.

His racist rhetoric of building walls and deporting illegals is more than enough to get the support of the proudly and willfully ignorant electorate that other candidates like Bobby Jindal have desperately and painfully attempted to pander to. The interesting thing is, he is polling well with nearly every single group within the Republican base. He’s polling well with the Tea Party, the racists, the gun nuts, the misogyny crowd, and even the evangelicals.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to those of us on the left who have always labeled the conservative movement nothing more than a misinformation train of ignorance, speeding down a track that will inevitably end in a horrific crash. I believe we are witnessing the crash in slow motion.

Donald Trump is doing a masterful job of trolling the uninformed base of the GOP. Trump is no more of a conservative than I am, yet his empty and racist rhetoric about making America great again – by getting rid of the brown people – is really all it took to expose the Tea Party and GOP’s real reason for hating President Obama: His skin color.

Conservatives go on the defensive when confronted with the theory that racism is their main reason for hating President Obama. It is the main reason otherwise sane and rational adults truly believe that President Obama is going to confiscate their guns, implement death panels, and enact Sharia Law. After six and a half years, there is still no evidence to support any of these outlandish claims, yet here we are, still hearing these same scare tactics. The same uninformed conservative base continues to repeat these lies, and share fact-free memes that are based solely on some conspiracy rumor that Glenn Beck or Alex Jones decided to dream up.

Conservatives insist that their disdain for the president has nothing to do with his skin color, and everything to do with his policies. That’s a nice story; unfortunately it isn’t true. When Republican voters were asked about President Obama’s policies, they were against them. However, when they were led to believe that those same policies were Donald Trump’s, their view became favorable.

The GOP of Lincoln and Eisenhower is a distant memory, having been replaced by the party of Palin and Nugent. The days of being able to debate with an informed Republican are all but over. If we’re being honest here, the GOP really began its downward spiral in November of 2008 – right around the time we elected our first African-American president.

Ben Madison is a Liberal political activist who believes in an America where everyone is afforded the opportunities to achieve their goals and dreams regardless of color, race, gender, or socioeconomic status. He has spent time in Texas as well as North Carolina and currently resides in Louisiana. He is the founder of The Middle Class is Drowning on Facebook and can be followed on Twitter @BenHMadison.